UCLA Festival of Preservation 2017

October 7 - November 1

"The greatest cinematic show on Earth...offers an unparalleled deep dive into the seldom-explored sea that is American film history." — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

Venues like the Gene Siskel Film Center depend heavily upon the efforts of enlightened film archives and distribution companies to undertake the costly and difficult task of preserving classic films in the glorious but rapidly disappearing medium of 35mm film. No organization has been more important to us in this respect than the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The gorgeous restorations we have shown in recent years of such films as Max Ophuls's LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, Shirley Clarke's THE CONNECTION, Joseph H. Lewis's GUN CRAZY, Larry Clark's PASSING THROUGH, and J.L. Anderson's SPRING NIGHT, SUMMER NIGHT represent just a few of the treasures that UCLA has shared with us.

With more than 220,000 motion picture and television titles, the UCLA collection is second only to the Library of Congress in the United States and is the largest of any university in the world. Every two years, the archive opens up its vaults and presents the cream of its latest restorations to the public in the Festival of Preservation. As it did in 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015, the “UCLA Festival of Preservation” is touring in 2017-18 to selected venues across North America, and the Film Center is honored to be included among them.

The eight programs cover a wide spectrum of mostly American film history. Comedy at its most sophisticated and its most raucous is represented by Ernst Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE and Laurel & Hardy's SONS OF THE DESERT, respectively. The range of film noir is demonstrated by excursions into such border regions as semi-documentary (HE WALKED BY NIGHT), Gothic romance (THE LOST MOMENT), social consciousness (OPEN SECRET), and Argentinian cinema (LOS TALLOS AMARGOS). The world of independent cinema is visited in the Chicago-made activist documentary THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON and the experimental narrative of an overlooked female director, Juleen Compton's STRANDED.

35mm preservation prints courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

— Martin Rubin, Associate Director of Programming

Special thanks to Steven Hill and KJ Reith of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

UCLA DOUBLE-BILL DISCOUNT!
Buy a ticket at our regular prices for the first UCLA film on any Saturday in October, and get a ticket for the second UCLA film that day at the discounted rate with proof of your original purchase: General Admission $7; Students $5; Members $4. (This discount rate applies to the second film only. Discount available in person at the box office only.)